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Elephants lose tusks to survive poachers

Jerome Starkey, Africa Correspondent

November 26 2016, 12:01am, The Times

In the Addo wildlife park, South Africa, only 2 per cent of female elephants are born with tusksIan Walton/Getty Images

Growing numbers of African elephants are being born without tusks as poachers continue to pick off specimens with the best ivory — fundamentally changing the gene pool in the process, scientists have said.

Almost a third of Africa’s elephants have been slaughtered in the past ten years to satisfy the demand for ivory in Asia. About 144,000 elephants were killed from 2007 to 2014 and the species faces extinction in some areas. The elephants that do survive could become virtually tuskless, like their Asian cousins, researchers have warned.

Joyce Poole, head of the Elephant Voices charity, who has been tracking the development for more than 30 years, said certain herds had shown a direct correlation between intensity of poaching and the percentage of females born…